1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a maintenance system for image forming apparatuses, such as electrophotographic copying machines and printers, and a maintenance method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an image forming apparatus utilizing electrophotography to form monochrome or full-color images sometimes suffer from troubles, such as failure of the apparatus and abnormal images, which occur due to aging of component parts resulting from long-term service. When such a trouble occurs in an image forming apparatus of the above-mentioned type, a service person who has received information on the trouble from the customer visits the customer to investigate the cause of the trouble and carry out appropriate maintenance e.g. by replacing parts. Thus, the performance of the apparatus is maintained and managed.
Further, there has been proposed a system in which image forming apparatuses installed in a plurality of customer sites, respectively, are connected to a server or a host computer via a network such that the server or the host computer can provide necessary information for maintenance to thereby improve the convenience of the service.
For example, a system of the above-mentioned type is configured such that each image forming apparatus can acquire contents of a service manual and a method of troubleshooting as information concerning the apparatus from an external server and display the information on an operating panel or a CRT display thereof so as to facilitate service management (see e.g. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2002-84388).
Furthermore, there has been proposed a system in which image data read by an image forming apparatus is sent to a managing apparatus, and an operator of the managing apparatus views the received image data to acquire information on an abnormality of the apparatus, and make use of the information in investigating the cause of the abnormality or determining a method of coping with the trouble (see e.g. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-343621).
In the system disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2002-84388, it is possible to store a means for troubleshooting in association with respective predictable troubles in the external server in advance. Actually, however, an exceptional trouble can occur. In such a case, there is no means provided for troubleshooting, and hence a service person has to investigate the cause of the trouble and find out a method of coping with the trouble.
Particularly when an image forming apparatus is a new model, no service person has sufficient experience or know-how in troubleshooting the apparatus, so that a troubleshooting operation might take much time, or replacement of more parts than necessary might be carried out, resulting in an increase in maintenance costs.
On the other hand, in the system disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2004-343621, the cause of an abnormality which occurs in the image reading system of an image forming apparatus can be determined, but an abnormality which occurs in the image forming system cannot be coped with. Further, since the cause of a trouble is determined based on investigation by an operator, the operator cannot perform correct troubleshooting unless he has sufficient knowledge.